Teens’ Social Media Usage Is Drastically Increasing

Facebook’s foundation in 2004 makes today’s teenagers the first generation to have grown up with social media. And while plenty of older people are avid users of Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms, no other generation has social media and technology so deeply engrained into their everyday lives as those born after the turn of the century.

According to the data social media usage among teenagers has drastically increased between 2012 and 2018. A survey conducted in the U.S. earlier this year showed that 70 percent of teenagers (13-17) check social media several times a day, up from just 34 percent in 2012. More astoundingly, however, 16 percent of today’s teens admit to checking their social feeds nearly constantly and another 27 percent do so on an hourly basis.

It is hard to say how much social media use is too much, but constantly checking for likes, comments or new posts by friends certainly has an effect on young people and many studies suggest that it’s not a positive one. Social media and device addiction are an important issue in the internet age and it will take an effort by the industry as well as the users themselves to tackle it head on.

Author: Advisight

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13 Comments

All these stats prove my suspicion all these while – lesser human interaction in the public and family space and the potential risk of mental isolation and disrupted growing behaviors. I see this every day in my work place and totally agitated with teens that are so glued to their phones that they totally ignore what’s happening around them. It’s very scary because it wasn’t the way I was brought up.

I have an 11 year old girl and a 13 year old boy, so I am right there in the thick of it. My son uses Instagram quite a bit, but mostly to message his friends and to watch biking videos. My daughter runs our cat’s Instagram page. lol They don’t use Twitter or Facebook or anything else.

With that said, they are both on YouTube quite a lot. YouTube has almost completely taken over regular TV. (for me as well!) I’m ok with it based on what I see them watching, but I also know there are plenty of dangerous things lurking on YouTube.

The good news is that they also are both active and get outside quite a bit. We always make time for family time. They get all their homework done. So, as with anything, a balance of activities is good. Social media is here to stay. We all have to find the best ways to work it into our lives with the least amount of harm.

I thought the stats about kids who have good self-esteem versus those who don’t and how social media makes them feel was really, really interesting.

Thank you for your review, i found it scary too because nowadays social network became more important than family relationship, face to face friendship. Last time i asked one of my friend , he is a 25th boy ,why can’t you visit your grandma as she is ill? he answered me that he will whats app her and that’s all. I was frightened with that answer. Imagine if the grandma dies without seeing her grandson, social media is good but it is killing our young generations

Interesting article and I also notice an upward trend at young people. I’m 40 years old and although I use Facebook since 2008, we didn’t grow up with this technology.

Today, small kids and especially teenagers are constantly checking/doing things on social media. Sometime I think to myself, “what are they doin all the time?”, but that’s just because I can’t really relate to them as we didn’t have this when we were young.

I think the numbers will only increase as social media keeps getting more popular, so the small children of today, when they become teenagers, it will only keep getting worse.

Nice write-up and it confirmed what I thought. I see so many young people taking selfies and sharing or with their head constantly looking down at their phones. I always am thinking this is ridiculous and can’t be healthy. This incessant looking at phones to check social media is a bigger problem than people think and will lead to a generation of people with ADD who cannot focus and in my opinion will diminish true human interaction with the real world.

Thanks for sharing a great information about how people is getting busier more and more with Social Media, “a new way of communication” with others.

Great graphics that help us to understand how people and more teenagers spend their time with their cell phones in their hands everyday.

Do we need to learn this new way to interact with others?

I live in the country in Canada, and I’m happy to say I can see people around here still working long hours without their cell phones in their hands all the time, I can go to a restaurant where people still interact with their family the old fashion, talking to each others.

Thanks again for sharing a good article to read and to know more about how the use of Social Media is growing and to understand more about how it works.

This article provides such interesting insights to the social media usage of teens. I never knew that so many of them turn to Snapchat as their number one social media site. I must seem such a dinosaur to them, still actively hanging out on facebook.

It’s also shocking that 16% of them are almost constantly on social media! When do they ever live their life then?

This reminds me to be firm with my stand of no gadgets for my kids, for as long as I can help it. My eldest is 10 years old, so I’m not sure how long more I can hold out on this.

The way our children are growing is quite shocking! Teenagers seem to be living online these days. What happened to the good old days when you talked, played and did so much together! These figures are high and growing. How do we slow this growing rate down? How do we get our teenagers to interact more with people and less with phones?

Social medias are an amazing tool to share Your life and experieces with the world or use it to reach out to anyone from anywhere in the world, however it doesn’t come without its consequences. I think a moderate usage of social media can give a person some great benefits such as mind relaxation, it can also give You some fun reasons to laugh and smile or it can give a person some new and exciting ideas for any type of activity a certain individual is interested in.

However, too much of social media can lead to some disastrous consequences- it can completely take over a person’s life and diminish his personality, which can result in a human acting more like an ”robot”, if that makes sense. It can also demotivate a person significantly.

Thank You for this informative article, it was very interesting to see and learn how drastically social media usage has increased over the years and what teens themselves have to say about this whole topic. You’ve done a great job and keep up the good work.

Thank you for this informative post, As we do say in this part of the world, social media is a viral disease to the teens thou it has it own positive side such as exposure and civilization but at long run it has more detrimental effect on the youth. It is the major cause of distraction and has diverted minds of the teens from other meaningful things.

I still have a cell phone, not smartphone, which I only use when really necessary to call or text (sms).

I can see the good in the Internet so far but I also see its danger and the downfall it can bring to us as an individual or as a society.

Teens these days do have some loses due to being too long on the Internet and using too much of social media platforms.

I can see it with my own grandchildren, 17 and 14, and have i.e. made the rule when they visiting me at my house their smartphones have to stay off so we can talk face to face without interruption.

I find all the stats interesting but I also have to say that the bigger “blame” has to be given to the parents themselves since they are the role models and perhaps, unintentionally, have shown their kids how to do it.

Thank you for sharing this article. Social media today has taken over the lives of teens and is not talked about as much as it should. I am currently in college and see many people throughout the day glued to their phones. I am just grateful that I never got caught up in that. Social media though is not the problem entirely. Parents also have a role to play in limiting their child’s time and access and determining what age to get them a phone. 8 years old is way too young to need a phone. I was 14 and just starting middle school when I first got a phone and that was just for emergencies because I was doing an after school sport for the first time.